Method and System for Delayed Completion Coalescing

Abstract

Certain aspects of a method and system for delayed completion coalescing may be disclosed. Exemplary aspects of the method may include accumulating a plurality of bytes of incoming TCP segments in a host memory until a number of the plurality of bytes of incoming TCP segments reaches a threshold value. A completion queue entry (CQE) may be generated to a driver when the plurality of bytes of incoming TCP segments reaches the threshold value and the plurality of bytes of incoming TCP segments may be copied to a user application. The method may also include delaying in a driver, an update of a TCP receive window size until one of the incoming TCP segments corresponding to a particular sequence number is copied to the user application. The CQE may also be generated to the driver when at least one of the incoming TCP segments is received with a TCP PUSH bit SET and the TCP receive window size is greater than a particular window size value.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS / INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE[0001]This application makes reference to, claims priority to, and claims benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 829,806 (Attorney Docket No. 17959US01) filed on Oct. 17, 2006.[0002]The above stated application is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0003]Certain embodiments of the invention relate to network interfaces. More specifically, certain embodiments of the invention relate to a method and system for delayed completion coalescing.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0004]The TCP / IP protocol has long been the common language for network traffic. However, processing TCP / IP traffic may require significant server resources. Specialized software and integrated hardware known as TCP offload engine (TOE) technology may eliminate server-processing constraints. The TOE technology may comprise software extensions to existing TCP / IP stacks that may enable the use of hardware...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0011]A method and / or system for delayed completion coalescing, substantially as shown in and / or described in connection with at least one of the figures, as set forth more completely in the claims.

Problems solved by technology

However, processing TCP / IP traffic may require significant server resources.

The NICs may process TCP / IP operations in software, which may create substantial system overhead, for example, overhead due to data copies, protocol processing and interrupt processing.

The increase in the number of packet transactions generated per application network I / O may cause high interrupt load on servers and hardware interrupt lines may be activated to provide event notification.

This may create significant protocol processing overhead and high interrupt rates.

Another significant overhead may include processing of a packet delivered by the TNIC.

While some operating system features such as interrupt coalescing may reduce interrupts, the corresponding event processing for each server to NIC transaction, and processing of each packet but TNIC driver may not be eliminated.

Standard NICs may incorporate hardware checksum support and software enhancements to eliminate transmit-data copies, but may not be able to eliminate receive-data copies that may consume significant processor cycles.

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